Don’t watch the news, it kills creativity

Oct 22 2009

I have a confession to make: I’m a news junkie. I like to know what’s going on in the world. In the morning, before heading off for work, I’ll watch the morning news while eating breakfast. At night I’ll turn it on to make sure the world is still spinning. Over time, however, I have noticed there is an inverse relationship between news and creativity: The more news I watch, the more my creativity goes down.

What the hell am I talking about? I’ll try to explain it better. The news is usually (with the exception of those special interest segments) very negative with stories about crime, violence, death, war and so on. Bring politics and/or religion into the mix and the news gets very heated very fast. I find that my feathers get ruffled and I’ll sit there and stew in anger about a news story I just watched.

My energy becomes focused on that piece of news and I lose all interest in writing, poetry and my other creative endeavors. I’m now making a conscious effort to watch less news. The results have been good. I’m finding myself writing more and thinking of better ideas for my various projects. In other words, I’m more inspired and feel more creativity running through my veins.

This also brings up the broader argument about the distraction and waste of time that television poses. I’m always surprised at the large number of people who say they don’t own a television. Whenever they feel like watching something, they fire up the computer and watch a DVD or jump onto sites like Hulu for free shows.

I’m not 100% against television, but I think it can become a crutch for boredom. Lately I’ve been spending my time in the evenings reading instead of watching any number of mindless sitcoms.

Do you find that watching the news, or television in general kills your creativity? Leave a comment below and share your experience. Inquiring minds want to know.

2 Responses

This title caught my attention, because I’m a news junkie, too. But I’m much more selective about the news I read. By using RSS, I can select the news sites that interest me the most.

For example, I follow somewhere around twenty sites that report on Southeast Asian politics. I’m always trying to figure out what’s really going on, since each article has a different perspective of the same issues.

I also blog about the trends I see at http://www.ilovethailand.org/user/bailish/blogs. By keeping it organized, I hope to turn this into a story one day. (More like one year, but who’s counting?)

My point of all this is that we are much more in control of the type of news we can follow these days than in the days before Internet. If we want to follow only uplifting news, then we can decide to do that. The news services of our parents are going the ways of the dinosaurs, those oversized beasts that didn’t realize they had no control over their environment.
Bailish Habilis´s last blog ..Oil and Gas companies back Puea Thai

Bailish Habilis 10/22/2009 8:55 pm
Hi Bailish, thank you for your comment!

I like how you said you’re selective about the news you read. A big problem for me is that there is just too much news out there, especially today in our super-connected world. Its information overload.

Maybe I’ll try narrowing down my news intake through RSS feeds and see how that works. I just have to give up the 24-hour network news – that’s the real creativity killer!

Brad Vertrees 10/22/2009 10:03 pm